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Posted to dev@openoffice.apache.org by Peter Junge <pe...@gmx.org> on 2012/10/29 01:16:39 UTC
Re: [ApacheCon] BoF session on AOO community
On 9/27/2012 8:49 AM, Andrew Rist wrote:
>
> On 9/24/2012 9:46 PM, Peter Junge wrote:
>> Dear OpenOffice Community,
>>
>> During ApacheCon Europe 2012 (ACEU 2012; http://apachecon.eu/), we
>> will hold a 90-minute session on the state of the community. Our topic
>> is as broad as the community and includes discussion on how to develop
>> and further the community of contributors and users making up AOO. We
>> hope you can be there and add your voice! We seldom have opportunity
>> to meet in person, and this will be a great occasion to go over where
>> we are as a community, what we need to do to improve the operations of
>> the community, and what can be done by us all to take AOO to top-level
>> status. Everyone is invited—and to encourage you further to
>> participate, we hope to welcome the Apache mentors who are helping AOO
>> move ahead.
>>
>> At the moment, I'm responsible for this session but due to the fact
>> that I'm located in Beijing I will not be able to attend in person.
>> Hence, it would be great to find one or two volunteers to host this
>> BoF session about the AOO community at the ApacheCon Europe.
> I would be interested, Peter.
> Andrew
@Andrew, sorry for replying quite late, but I guess my first posting
came to long before the event anyway.
@All: Let's discuss what what could be talked about during the BoF
session on AOO community in Sinsheim. (Note: I'm not attending the
ApacheCon EU.)
After reviewing a couple of threads in the mailing list archives, I'd
like to point out the challenges below:
1) The challenge of dissimilarity of community and community culture:
We've seen it in a couple of discussions on the mailing lists. The
Apache Way and the former OOo community work quite different, a couple
of time disagreement with the mentors arose. Apache is a community where
committers leave their affiliations behind (at least in theory) while
OOo was under the hood of a single company. At Apache the individual
needs to earn merits to be promoted as a committer and later as a PMC
member, while OOo everybody just could right away. Apache has a
hierarchy of roles (contributor, committer, PMC) but no real leaders
(except the PMC chair), while OOo didn't know such hierarchy but had
appointed project leads who had certain administrative powers. At
Apache, I assume, at least 80% are developers because so far the
majority of projects were about producing software by developers for
developers, while OOo and still AOO is a large piece of software for end
users. At the old OOo community, and I guess many of them are still
around but not visible here, more then half of the people involved were
not developers, but many volunteers working on localization, QA,
documentation, user support and marketing etc. The OOo community was
strongly heterogeneous, many native language projects had their own
websites and communication channels, detached from the core community.
So, the first challenge is: How does that all fit into the Apache way,
but still keeping the identity of OpenOffice and leaving room for the
satellite communities that do great work e.g. by offering OO support in
many different languages?
2) The challenge producing end user software at Apache:
As said above, Apache was so far (at least AFAIK) only producing
software from developers for developers, contrarily AOO is an end user
software. The former usually doesn't need any special promotion effort.
Developers and users just come by if they need a particular piece of
software. With an end user software like OpenOffice this is much
different. AOO needs a big marketing effort to reach its users and
constantly growing that user base. At the former OOo community many
volunteers have been attending trade fairs (e.g. the CeBIT in Hanover,
Germany) and innumerous other events to reach the public. Driving such
efforts costs a fair amount of money that should not be solely
shouldered by the volunteers who already contribute a fair mount of
their time. So, the second challenge is, how to raise funds, either
within or outside Apache, to continue with appropriate marketing efforts
for AOO?
3) The challenge of building the community:
The AOO community needs steadily working on developing the community by
recruiting developers, QA, translators and people doing documentation
and marketing. The third challenge is, how to reach them? A part of this
effort can certainly go along with the former challenge as 'marketing to
developers'. Being present at events usually reaches many different
kinds of people.
Other challenges are welcome.
Best regards,
Peter
P.S: and there's still the challenge to find one or two moderators for
that BoF session. Andrew, are you still willing?
Re: [ApacheCon] BoF session on AOO community
Posted by Rob Weir <ro...@apache.org>.
On Mon, Oct 29, 2012 at 12:18 AM, Louis Suárez-Potts <lu...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 12-10-28, at 23:33 , Rob Weir <ro...@apache.org> wrote:
>
>>
>> That's the way to grow. Raising money to send the existing volunteers
>> to travel to more places is only growth for the airline industry. It
>> is not growth for the project. We need to find people who are able to
>> succeed in a business based on enhancing or supporting the OpenOffice
>> product to businesses and users.. A business based on promoting the
>> OpenOffice open source project is not really a business model. I
>> don't think we want to encourage anyone to think of making a career as
>> a professional OpenOffice community manager or anything like that.
>
> hey! ;=) Though your contempt for community management is, I have to say, a little ironic, given that's pretty much what you do.
>
I don't have contempt for the role. It was fine as a
corporate-defined role in a corporate-led and sponsored open source
project. I just don't see the role as applicable in a community-led
meritocracy.
> But actually I agree with you here, in that what would work to enlarge the community of contributors is not sending ambassadors here and there to little effect but to (and here I extend the argument) to provide the resources for regional ecosystem growth.
>
> Those resources are, I think, cheap. They are: website, badge, banners; guidelines for trademark; wiki for suggestions, additions, and minimal provisions for beer and pizza (and its equivalents) for initial meetings. In short, what you normally find at a LUG or so.
>
> louis
>
>
Re: [ApacheCon] BoF session on AOO community
Posted by Louis Suárez-Potts <lu...@gmail.com>.
On 12-10-28, at 23:33 , Rob Weir <ro...@apache.org> wrote:
>
> That's the way to grow. Raising money to send the existing volunteers
> to travel to more places is only growth for the airline industry. It
> is not growth for the project. We need to find people who are able to
> succeed in a business based on enhancing or supporting the OpenOffice
> product to businesses and users.. A business based on promoting the
> OpenOffice open source project is not really a business model. I
> don't think we want to encourage anyone to think of making a career as
> a professional OpenOffice community manager or anything like that.
hey! ;=) Though your contempt for community management is, I have to say, a little ironic, given that's pretty much what you do.
But actually I agree with you here, in that what would work to enlarge the community of contributors is not sending ambassadors here and there to little effect but to (and here I extend the argument) to provide the resources for regional ecosystem growth.
Those resources are, I think, cheap. They are: website, badge, banners; guidelines for trademark; wiki for suggestions, additions, and minimal provisions for beer and pizza (and its equivalents) for initial meetings. In short, what you normally find at a LUG or so.
louis
Re: [ApacheCon] BoF session on AOO community
Posted by Peter Junge <pe...@gmx.org>.
On 10/29/2012 10:16 PM, Donald Whytock wrote:
> About Peter's point #2...I suppose this is getting kind of abstract,
> but what is the payoff from expanding AOO's community? Typically
> marketing is performed to increase sales, which earns money; AOO has
> no sales, so what should the intended benefit from marketing be?
I think this is not abstract for those who have been part of the former
OOo community.
In a typical Apache project you have developers, testers, people working
on documentation. They join for different reason, some are delegated by
their employers, some are freelancers who want to sharpen their profile
as an expert for that project (among many other possible reasons) and
some are volunteers who join for fun. With an end-user projects the same
reasons apply for the marketing people. At OOo we had contributors who
wrote a detailed business plan, just for fun. I, for instance,
coordinated the efforts for OOo booth at the CeBIT in 2011 as volunteer,
just because I enjoyed doing it.
>
> How does Apache gain from a larger user base for AOO? More users ->
> more traffic -> more demand for resources -> more demand for people
> that maintain infrastructure and the money to pay for said
> infrastructure. What is Apache's interest in promoting its offering
> of AOO?
I cannot speak for Apache, but as the ASF had accepted Oracle's grant,
they now have the responsibility to deal with it.
>
> How does AOO gain from a larger user base? More beta-testing, more
> word-of-mouth exposure, more potential donors? More representative
> clout for acquiring resources from Apache?
Did no one consider that?
>
> I'm not saying -- I would never say -- that making AOO available to
> the world is a bad or unnecessary thing. Given monopolistic business
> practices and commercialization of software available, it's important
> for there to be freely available alternatives to such things as an
> office productivity suite. But if marketing is going to occur, it
> would be good to know what said marketing is meant to accomplish,
> other than promotion for promotion's sake. Promotion for promotion's
> sake is the organizational manifestation of a viral idea.
Many (unpaid) volunteers are working on such a viral idea successfully
at LO and they are rewarded with a fair amount of donations from people
who honor the efforts. But, doesn't a similar idea apply for Apache's
HTTP server? Why does Apache produce it, isn't it simply production for
production's sake?
>
> If there's to be a discussion on marketing, perhaps it should include
> a manifesto that's more concrete and strategic than "Don't you think
> this is great? Let's throw money at it until you do."
That's why it should be discussed in that BoF session we're talking about.
Re: [ApacheCon] BoF session on AOO community
Posted by Donald Whytock <dw...@gmail.com>.
On Mon, Oct 29, 2012 at 12:59 PM, Alexandro Colorado <jz...@oooes.org> wrote:
>
> Shouldnt this be on ooo-marketing?
Probably. But it was in response to Peter's questions about ApacheCon
EU discussion topics, one of which was about end-user software vs. the
typical Apache offering, and how a big difference is that "AOO needs a
big marketing effort to reach its users and constantly growing that
user base."
I just think such a discussion should include thoughts on what said
marketing effort can and should hope to accomplish for a FOSS product
vs. a commercial one.
Don
Re: [ApacheCon] BoF session on AOO community
Posted by Alexandro Colorado <jz...@oooes.org>.
On 10/29/12, Donald Whytock <dw...@gmail.com> wrote:
> About Peter's point #2...I suppose this is getting kind of abstract,
> but what is the payoff from expanding AOO's community? Typically
> marketing is performed to increase sales, which earns money; AOO has
> no sales, so what should the intended benefit from marketing be?
Usually donnations, most of OOo community income came from donations,
and some grants from Sun. You can read more agbout the budget on the
wiki:
http://wiki.openoffice.org/wiki/Community_Council/Funding_And_Budgets/Budget_2011
>
> How does Apache gain from a larger user base for AOO? More users ->
> more traffic -> more demand for resources -> more demand for people
> that maintain infrastructure and the money to pay for said
> infrastructure. What is Apache's interest in promoting its offering
> of AOO?
Not sure, but is a good question. Then again, why do apache would want
to add projects to their foundation on the first place? That answer
should loosely apply to this one.
> How does AOO gain from a larger user base? More beta-testing, more
> word-of-mouth exposure, more potential donors? More representative
> clout for acquiring resources from Apache?
>
> I'm not saying -- I would never say -- that making AOO available to
> the world is a bad or unnecessary thing. Given monopolistic business
> practices and commercialization of software available, it's important
> for there to be freely available alternatives to such things as an
> office productivity suite. But if marketing is going to occur, it
> would be good to know what said marketing is meant to accomplish,
> other than promotion for promotion's sake. Promotion for promotion's
> sake is the organizational manifestation of a viral idea.
>
> If there's to be a discussion on marketing, perhaps it should include
> a manifesto that's more concrete and strategic than "Don't you think
> this is great? Let's throw money at it until you do."
Shouldnt this be on ooo-marketing?
>
> Don
>
--
Alexandro Colorado
PPMC Apache OpenOffice
http://es.openoffice.org
Re: [ApacheCon] BoF session on AOO community
Posted by Roberto Galoppini <rg...@geek.net>.
On Wed, Oct 31, 2012 at 10:29 PM, Louis Suárez-Potts <lu...@gmail.com>wrote:
> Roberto,
>
> On 12-10-31, at 15:14 , Roberto Galoppini <rg...@geek.net> wrote:
>
> > On Wed, Oct 31, 2012 at 8:55 AM, Andrea Pescetti <pe...@apache.org>
> wrote:
> >> On 29/10/2012 Roberto Galoppini wrote:
> >>>
> >>> A more diverse and sustainable project. For example, until few years
> >>> ago having OOo integrated or at least able to interoperate with SAP
> >>> was a distinct dream, is there any chance we can have the right SAP
> >>> people to attend the AOO BoF, and discuss about this?
> >>
> >>
> >> This would be quite interesting too. I don't have any contacts, but it
> would
> >> be good to have SAP people there and, in general, devote a part of the
> >> session to exploring how OpenOffice can interoperate with other
> solutions
> >> (or what the OpenOffice community can do to allow others to be able to
> >> integrate with OpenOffice more easily), so not only the community in a
> >> strict sense but the ecosystem around it too.
> >
> > I have sent an email to my open source contacts at SAP, maybe other
> > Apache members might have contacts too.
> >
>
> I have my old friend from Sun, Erwin T., as well as others through him,
> and then some outside of open source. We've had discussions with SAP
> before—but that was prior-moulting, when we were still Oracles.
>
I've dropped a couple of emails, but it's All Saints in Germany and it
would be unlikely to hear back before Monday.
> Having been in the OOo migrations' business for some years, I firmly
> > believe we should try hard to reduce the SI integration gap.
>
> Absolutely. Totally agree. Huzza. So let's. Can we perhaps formalize this
> in a wiki of Things That Are Important or At Least Worth It?
>
We might do that, but a survey could probably do a better job in this
respect, though. While actually for things like SAP we've heard that so
many times from medium-large companies that likely we do not need to ask.
Roberto
>
> Louis
> >
> > Roberto
> >
> >> Regards,
> >> Andrea.
>
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Re: [ApacheCon] BoF session on AOO community
Posted by Louis Suárez-Potts <lu...@gmail.com>.
Roberto,
On 12-10-31, at 15:14 , Roberto Galoppini <rg...@geek.net> wrote:
> On Wed, Oct 31, 2012 at 8:55 AM, Andrea Pescetti <pe...@apache.org> wrote:
>> On 29/10/2012 Roberto Galoppini wrote:
>>>
>>> A more diverse and sustainable project. For example, until few years
>>> ago having OOo integrated or at least able to interoperate with SAP
>>> was a distinct dream, is there any chance we can have the right SAP
>>> people to attend the AOO BoF, and discuss about this?
>>
>>
>> This would be quite interesting too. I don't have any contacts, but it would
>> be good to have SAP people there and, in general, devote a part of the
>> session to exploring how OpenOffice can interoperate with other solutions
>> (or what the OpenOffice community can do to allow others to be able to
>> integrate with OpenOffice more easily), so not only the community in a
>> strict sense but the ecosystem around it too.
>
> I have sent an email to my open source contacts at SAP, maybe other
> Apache members might have contacts too.
>
I have my old friend from Sun, Erwin T., as well as others through him, and then some outside of open source. We've had discussions with SAP before—but that was prior-moulting, when we were still Oracles.
> Having been in the OOo migrations' business for some years, I firmly
> believe we should try hard to reduce the SI integration gap.
Absolutely. Totally agree. Huzza. So let's. Can we perhaps formalize this in a wiki of Things That Are Important or At Least Worth It?
Louis
>
> Roberto
>
>> Regards,
>> Andrea.
>
> --
> ====
> This e- mail message is intended only for the named recipient(s) above. It
> may contain confidential and privileged information. If you are not the
> intended recipient you are hereby notified that any dissemination,
> distribution or copying of this e-mail and any attachment(s) is strictly
> prohibited. If you have received this e-mail in error, please immediately
> notify the sender by replying to this e-mail and delete the message and any
> attachment(s) from your system. Thank you.
>
Re: [ApacheCon] BoF session on AOO community
Posted by Roberto Galoppini <rg...@geek.net>.
On Wed, Oct 31, 2012 at 8:55 AM, Andrea Pescetti <pe...@apache.org> wrote:
> On 29/10/2012 Roberto Galoppini wrote:
>>
>> A more diverse and sustainable project. For example, until few years
>> ago having OOo integrated or at least able to interoperate with SAP
>> was a distinct dream, is there any chance we can have the right SAP
>> people to attend the AOO BoF, and discuss about this?
>
>
> This would be quite interesting too. I don't have any contacts, but it would
> be good to have SAP people there and, in general, devote a part of the
> session to exploring how OpenOffice can interoperate with other solutions
> (or what the OpenOffice community can do to allow others to be able to
> integrate with OpenOffice more easily), so not only the community in a
> strict sense but the ecosystem around it too.
I have sent an email to my open source contacts at SAP, maybe other
Apache members might have contacts too.
Having been in the OOo migrations' business for some years, I firmly
believe we should try hard to reduce the SI integration gap.
Roberto
> Regards,
> Andrea.
--
====
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Re: [ApacheCon] BoF session on AOO community
Posted by Andrea Pescetti <pe...@apache.org>.
On 29/10/2012 Roberto Galoppini wrote:
> A more diverse and sustainable project. For example, until few years
> ago having OOo integrated or at least able to interoperate with SAP
> was a distinct dream, is there any chance we can have the right SAP
> people to attend the AOO BoF, and discuss about this?
This would be quite interesting too. I don't have any contacts, but it
would be good to have SAP people there and, in general, devote a part of
the session to exploring how OpenOffice can interoperate with other
solutions (or what the OpenOffice community can do to allow others to be
able to integrate with OpenOffice more easily), so not only the
community in a strict sense but the ecosystem around it too.
Regards,
Andrea.
Re: [ApacheCon] BoF session on AOO community
Posted by Roberto Galoppini <rg...@geek.net>.
On Mon, Oct 29, 2012 at 3:16 PM, Donald Whytock <dw...@gmail.com> wrote:
> About Peter's point #2...I suppose this is getting kind of abstract,
> but what is the payoff from expanding AOO's community?
A more diverse and sustainable project. For example, until few years
ago having OOo integrated or at least able to interoperate with SAP
was a distinct dream, is there any chance we can have the right SAP
people to attend the AOO BoF, and discuss about this?
SugarCRM's CEO wrote in early May [1] wrote that he they were looking
at how they can integrate with OpenOffice, it would be great to see
things like this happening.
Roberto
[1] http://lmaugustin.typepad.com/lma/2012/05/apache-releases-openoffice-34-sugarcrm-looking-at-how-we-can-integrate-with-openoffice-httpowlyanyok.html
> Typically
> marketing is performed to increase sales, which earns money; AOO has
> no sales, so what should the intended benefit from marketing be?
>
> How does Apache gain from a larger user base for AOO? More users ->
> more traffic -> more demand for resources -> more demand for people
> that maintain infrastructure and the money to pay for said
> infrastructure. What is Apache's interest in promoting its offering
> of AOO?
>
> How does AOO gain from a larger user base? More beta-testing, more
> word-of-mouth exposure, more potential donors? More representative
> clout for acquiring resources from Apache?
>
> I'm not saying -- I would never say -- that making AOO available to
> the world is a bad or unnecessary thing. Given monopolistic business
> practices and commercialization of software available, it's important
> for there to be freely available alternatives to such things as an
> office productivity suite. But if marketing is going to occur, it
> would be good to know what said marketing is meant to accomplish,
> other than promotion for promotion's sake. Promotion for promotion's
> sake is the organizational manifestation of a viral idea.
>
> If there's to be a discussion on marketing, perhaps it should include
> a manifesto that's more concrete and strategic than "Don't you think
> this is great? Let's throw money at it until you do."
>
> Don
--
====
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may contain confidential and privileged information. If you are not the
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Re: [ApacheCon] BoF session on AOO community
Posted by Raphael Bircher <rb...@apache.org>.
Am 30.10.12 17:41, schrieb imacat:
> On 2012/10/29 23:26, Rob Weir said:
>> Then there is the secondary question of network effect and value of
>> the network. The more AOO users there are they greater the value of
>> skills in AOO extension development, of AOO training and certification
>> skills, and of migration and deployment services, etc. These business
>> interests all become more valuable the more users we have. Although
>> nothing requires that business built on AOO contribute back to the
>> project, in practice they often will, since helping to sustain the
>> project helps their business as well. So aside from the "volunteer
>> pyramid" we set up a second virtuous cycle with business interests.
> Unfortunately, in the few cases I've seen, this is just negative.
> In practice many of these business just don't help to sustain the
> project. I suppose many of them do help to sustain the project. Why
> some do and some don't is another interesting issue to be investigated
> further.
>
> I occasionally hear some local business doing OpenOffice support,
> but I cannot reach them. They just don't respond to us, and have no
> interests to connect to the open source community. (Afraid of us
> stealing their business? Afraid of us sharing their profit? Just
> afraid of communication trouble? Being conservative for Asian culture?)
I beleve the main problem is that consultants see a product, and not a
project. Same for big companies. I often hear from consultants "I don't
care about development". They also don't have the time to join a
project, and if, then they join the marketing.
I have had a load of talk with consultants, and showed the way for verry
simple work like testing snapshots and duing bug reports. No one of them
ever particip.
What could work is if OpenOffice Committers start to sell a "development
packages" We have to put our work into a service product. But this is
not samthing that we do at Apache, it's samething for outside the ASF.
Greetings Raphael
Re: [ApacheCon] BoF session on AOO community
Posted by Peter Junge <pe...@gmx.org>.
On 10/31/2012 11:11 AM, Kevin Grignon wrote:
[...]
> Great thread. So many interesting topics to explore at a BoF.
>
> Here are some thoughts related to broadening our skills set and
> transforming the project from open source development to open source
> product design and development.
>
> In support of the community development goals, perhaps the discussion could
> also explore academic partnerships. A strong academic partner can bring a
> variety of skills to the effort: business, technical and design. Could be
> a great win win relationship.
Great point. Certainly worth including it in the discussion.
Peter
Re: [ApacheCon] BoF session on AOO community
Posted by Kevin Grignon <ke...@gmail.com>.
On Wednesday, October 31, 2012, imacat wrote:
> On 2012/10/31 01:59, Rob Weir said:
> > On Tue, Oct 30, 2012 at 12:41 PM, imacat <imacat@mail.imacat.idv.tw<javascript:;>>
> wrote:
> >> On 2012/10/29 23:26, Rob Weir said:
> >>> Then there is the secondary question of network effect and value of
> >>> the network. The more AOO users there are they greater the value of
> >>> skills in AOO extension development, of AOO training and certification
> >>> skills, and of migration and deployment services, etc. These business
> >>> interests all become more valuable the more users we have. Although
> >>> nothing requires that business built on AOO contribute back to the
> >>> project, in practice they often will, since helping to sustain the
> >>> project helps their business as well. So aside from the "volunteer
> >>> pyramid" we set up a second virtuous cycle with business interests.
> >>
> >> Unfortunately, in the few cases I've seen, this is just negative.
> >> In practice many of these business just don't help to sustain the
> >> project. I suppose many of them do help to sustain the project. Why
> >> some do and some don't is another interesting issue to be investigated
> >> further.
> > Been there; done that. You didn't see IBM very active in
> > OpenOffice.org years ago, did you? There is a huge difference between
> > a corporate-lead and a community-led open source one. A community-led
> > one is much more welcoming to other large companies.. If a company
> > wanted to get involved with OpenOffice.org before then there was all
> > the messiness with dealing with Sun and wondering about whether Sun's
> > priorities would dominate over everything else. Look at the constant
> > battles Novell and Sun had, for example. This changes with the move
> > to Apache. So I'd recommend that we point this out to companies,
> > small and large. We shouldn't let past failures in this area
> > discourage us too much. It is a new situation now.
>
> Yap. I mean, your business theory is great. But there are some
> holes in it on the reality side that we need to overcome. It may work
> for IBM, but not all the other business. Maybe some more mails? Some
> more talks with people? Some other strategy?
>
> > Now sure, some companies will just be interested in training or
> > whatever, and have zero interest in participating. However, those
> > companies will be at a disadvantage compared to competing companies
> > that are participate. There is a level of information, skill,
> > expertise, even influence that comes from participating on the inside,
> > rather than watching from the outside.
> >
> >> I occasionally hear some local business doing OpenOffice support,
> >> but I cannot reach them. They just don't respond to us, and have no
> >> interests to connect to the open source community. (Afraid of us
> >> stealing their business? Afraid of us sharing their profit? Just
> >> afraid of communication trouble? Being conservative for Asian culture?)
> > A trainer can easily switch to training users for Google Docs, or
> > Microsoft Office, if they need to. So they are not as dependent on
> > the success of our project.
>
> I do not know if they are trainers or else. Someone refer me to
> them that they are doing OpenOffice jobs (technical? training?
> application development? anything else? I don't know.) and they may
> need my help. They never respond.
>
> That said, there are some holes in your theory.
>
> --
> Best regards,
> imacat ^_*' <imacat@mail.imacat.idv.tw <javascript:;>>
> PGP Key http://www.imacat.idv.tw/me/pgpkey.asc
>
> <<Woman's Voice>> News: http://www.wov.idv.tw/
> Tavern IMACAT's http://www.imacat.idv.tw/
> Woman in FOSS in Taiwan http://wofoss.blogspot.com/
> OpenOffice http://www.openoffice.org/
> EducOO/OOo4Kids Taiwan http://www.educoo.tw/
> Greenfoot Taiwan http://greenfoot.westart.tw/
>
>
Great thread. So many interesting topics to explore at a BoF.
Here are some thoughts related to broadening our skills set and
transforming the project from open source development to open source
product design and development.
In support of the community development goals, perhaps the discussion could
also explore academic partnerships. A strong academic partner can bring a
variety of skills to the effort: business, technical and design. Could be
a great win win relationship.
Regards,
Kevin
Re: [ApacheCon] BoF session on AOO community
Posted by imacat <im...@mail.imacat.idv.tw>.
On 2012/10/31 01:59, Rob Weir said:
> On Tue, Oct 30, 2012 at 12:41 PM, imacat <im...@mail.imacat.idv.tw> wrote:
>> On 2012/10/29 23:26, Rob Weir said:
>>> Then there is the secondary question of network effect and value of
>>> the network. The more AOO users there are they greater the value of
>>> skills in AOO extension development, of AOO training and certification
>>> skills, and of migration and deployment services, etc. These business
>>> interests all become more valuable the more users we have. Although
>>> nothing requires that business built on AOO contribute back to the
>>> project, in practice they often will, since helping to sustain the
>>> project helps their business as well. So aside from the "volunteer
>>> pyramid" we set up a second virtuous cycle with business interests.
>>
>> Unfortunately, in the few cases I've seen, this is just negative.
>> In practice many of these business just don't help to sustain the
>> project. I suppose many of them do help to sustain the project. Why
>> some do and some don't is another interesting issue to be investigated
>> further.
> Been there; done that. You didn't see IBM very active in
> OpenOffice.org years ago, did you? There is a huge difference between
> a corporate-lead and a community-led open source one. A community-led
> one is much more welcoming to other large companies.. If a company
> wanted to get involved with OpenOffice.org before then there was all
> the messiness with dealing with Sun and wondering about whether Sun's
> priorities would dominate over everything else. Look at the constant
> battles Novell and Sun had, for example. This changes with the move
> to Apache. So I'd recommend that we point this out to companies,
> small and large. We shouldn't let past failures in this area
> discourage us too much. It is a new situation now.
Yap. I mean, your business theory is great. But there are some
holes in it on the reality side that we need to overcome. It may work
for IBM, but not all the other business. Maybe some more mails? Some
more talks with people? Some other strategy?
> Now sure, some companies will just be interested in training or
> whatever, and have zero interest in participating. However, those
> companies will be at a disadvantage compared to competing companies
> that are participate. There is a level of information, skill,
> expertise, even influence that comes from participating on the inside,
> rather than watching from the outside.
>
>> I occasionally hear some local business doing OpenOffice support,
>> but I cannot reach them. They just don't respond to us, and have no
>> interests to connect to the open source community. (Afraid of us
>> stealing their business? Afraid of us sharing their profit? Just
>> afraid of communication trouble? Being conservative for Asian culture?)
> A trainer can easily switch to training users for Google Docs, or
> Microsoft Office, if they need to. So they are not as dependent on
> the success of our project.
I do not know if they are trainers or else. Someone refer me to
them that they are doing OpenOffice jobs (technical? training?
application development? anything else? I don't know.) and they may
need my help. They never respond.
That said, there are some holes in your theory.
--
Best regards,
imacat ^_*' <im...@mail.imacat.idv.tw>
PGP Key http://www.imacat.idv.tw/me/pgpkey.asc
<<Woman's Voice>> News: http://www.wov.idv.tw/
Tavern IMACAT's http://www.imacat.idv.tw/
Woman in FOSS in Taiwan http://wofoss.blogspot.com/
OpenOffice http://www.openoffice.org/
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Greenfoot Taiwan http://greenfoot.westart.tw/
Re: [ApacheCon] BoF session on AOO community
Posted by Rob Weir <ro...@apache.org>.
On Tue, Oct 30, 2012 at 12:41 PM, imacat <im...@mail.imacat.idv.tw> wrote:
> On 2012/10/29 23:26, Rob Weir said:
>> Then there is the secondary question of network effect and value of
>> the network. The more AOO users there are they greater the value of
>> skills in AOO extension development, of AOO training and certification
>> skills, and of migration and deployment services, etc. These business
>> interests all become more valuable the more users we have. Although
>> nothing requires that business built on AOO contribute back to the
>> project, in practice they often will, since helping to sustain the
>> project helps their business as well. So aside from the "volunteer
>> pyramid" we set up a second virtuous cycle with business interests.
>
> Unfortunately, in the few cases I've seen, this is just negative.
> In practice many of these business just don't help to sustain the
> project. I suppose many of them do help to sustain the project. Why
> some do and some don't is another interesting issue to be investigated
> further.
>
Been there; done that. You didn't see IBM very active in
OpenOffice.org years ago, did you? There is a huge difference between
a corporate-lead and a community-led open source one. A community-led
one is much more welcoming to other large companies.. If a company
wanted to get involved with OpenOffice.org before then there was all
the messiness with dealing with Sun and wondering about whether Sun's
priorities would dominate over everything else. Look at the constant
battles Novell and Sun had, for example. This changes with the move
to Apache. So I'd recommend that we point this out to companies,
small and large. We shouldn't let past failures in this area
discourage us too much. It is a new situation now.
Now sure, some companies will just be interested in training or
whatever, and have zero interest in participating. However, those
companies will be at a disadvantage compared to competing companies
that are participate. There is a level of information, skill,
expertise, even influence that comes from participating on the inside,
rather than watching from the outside.
> I occasionally hear some local business doing OpenOffice support,
> but I cannot reach them. They just don't respond to us, and have no
> interests to connect to the open source community. (Afraid of us
> stealing their business? Afraid of us sharing their profit? Just
> afraid of communication trouble? Being conservative for Asian culture?)
>
A trainer can easily switch to training users for Google Docs, or
Microsoft Office, if they need to. So they are not as dependent on
the success of our project.
-Rob
> This inference is basically great, but there are some potential
> holes in it.
>
> --
> Best regards,
> imacat ^_*' <im...@mail.imacat.idv.tw>
> PGP Key http://www.imacat.idv.tw/me/pgpkey.asc
>
> <<Woman's Voice>> News: http://www.wov.idv.tw/
> Tavern IMACAT's http://www.imacat.idv.tw/
> Woman in FOSS in Taiwan http://wofoss.blogspot.com/
> OpenOffice http://www.openoffice.org/
> EducOO/OOo4Kids Taiwan http://www.educoo.tw/
> Greenfoot Taiwan http://greenfoot.westart.tw/
>
Re: [ApacheCon] BoF session on AOO community
Posted by imacat <im...@mail.imacat.idv.tw>.
On 2012/10/29 23:26, Rob Weir said:
> Then there is the secondary question of network effect and value of
> the network. The more AOO users there are they greater the value of
> skills in AOO extension development, of AOO training and certification
> skills, and of migration and deployment services, etc. These business
> interests all become more valuable the more users we have. Although
> nothing requires that business built on AOO contribute back to the
> project, in practice they often will, since helping to sustain the
> project helps their business as well. So aside from the "volunteer
> pyramid" we set up a second virtuous cycle with business interests.
Unfortunately, in the few cases I've seen, this is just negative.
In practice many of these business just don't help to sustain the
project. I suppose many of them do help to sustain the project. Why
some do and some don't is another interesting issue to be investigated
further.
I occasionally hear some local business doing OpenOffice support,
but I cannot reach them. They just don't respond to us, and have no
interests to connect to the open source community. (Afraid of us
stealing their business? Afraid of us sharing their profit? Just
afraid of communication trouble? Being conservative for Asian culture?)
This inference is basically great, but there are some potential
holes in it.
--
Best regards,
imacat ^_*' <im...@mail.imacat.idv.tw>
PGP Key http://www.imacat.idv.tw/me/pgpkey.asc
<<Woman's Voice>> News: http://www.wov.idv.tw/
Tavern IMACAT's http://www.imacat.idv.tw/
Woman in FOSS in Taiwan http://wofoss.blogspot.com/
OpenOffice http://www.openoffice.org/
EducOO/OOo4Kids Taiwan http://www.educoo.tw/
Greenfoot Taiwan http://greenfoot.westart.tw/
Re: [ApacheCon] BoF session on AOO community
Posted by Rob Weir <ro...@apache.org>.
On Mon, Oct 29, 2012 at 10:16 AM, Donald Whytock <dw...@gmail.com> wrote:
> About Peter's point #2...I suppose this is getting kind of abstract,
> but what is the payoff from expanding AOO's community? Typically
> marketing is performed to increase sales, which earns money; AOO has
> no sales, so what should the intended benefit from marketing be?
>
> How does Apache gain from a larger user base for AOO? More users ->
> more traffic -> more demand for resources -> more demand for people
> that maintain infrastructure and the money to pay for said
> infrastructure. What is Apache's interest in promoting its offering
> of AOO?
>
A basic model to consider is a pyramid diagram, with users at the
base. They are the foundation of any project. Without satisfied
users, there is little motivation to do anything.
A small percentage of users will have the skills and interest to get
tangentially involved in the project, maybe submitting a bug report or
two, try a beta release, or telling their friends about us. That is
the next level of the pyramid.
A smaller percentage will have the skills and interest to make a solid
contribution or two, a code patch in rarer cases, but a documentation
or website patch in others. But they have no interesting in "joining"
the project per se. They are the next level of the pyramid.
Then a smaller percentage will want to get more involved and be a
steady contributor even becoming a committer. Those are at the top of
the pyramid.
The bigger the base, the bigger the top. The more users, the more
contributors we have, which leads to better releases and then attracts
more users. So we set up a virtuous cycle.
Then there is the secondary question of network effect and value of
the network. The more AOO users there are they greater the value of
skills in AOO extension development, of AOO training and certification
skills, and of migration and deployment services, etc. These business
interests all become more valuable the more users we have. Although
nothing requires that business built on AOO contribute back to the
project, in practice they often will, since helping to sustain the
project helps their business as well. So aside from the "volunteer
pyramid" we set up a second virtuous cycle with business interests.
> How does AOO gain from a larger user base? More beta-testing, more
> word-of-mouth exposure, more potential donors? More representative
> clout for acquiring resources from Apache?
>
> I'm not saying -- I would never say -- that making AOO available to
> the world is a bad or unnecessary thing. Given monopolistic business
> practices and commercialization of software available, it's important
> for there to be freely available alternatives to such things as an
> office productivity suite. But if marketing is going to occur, it
> would be good to know what said marketing is meant to accomplish,
> other than promotion for promotion's sake. Promotion for promotion's
> sake is the organizational manifestation of a viral idea.
>
> If there's to be a discussion on marketing, perhaps it should include
> a manifesto that's more concrete and strategic than "Don't you think
> this is great? Let's throw money at it until you do."
>
I'm happy to do a "call for volunteers" on the marketing side. That
might help bring in some fresh ideas.
> Don
Re: [ApacheCon] BoF session on AOO community
Posted by Donald Whytock <dw...@gmail.com>.
About Peter's point #2...I suppose this is getting kind of abstract,
but what is the payoff from expanding AOO's community? Typically
marketing is performed to increase sales, which earns money; AOO has
no sales, so what should the intended benefit from marketing be?
How does Apache gain from a larger user base for AOO? More users ->
more traffic -> more demand for resources -> more demand for people
that maintain infrastructure and the money to pay for said
infrastructure. What is Apache's interest in promoting its offering
of AOO?
How does AOO gain from a larger user base? More beta-testing, more
word-of-mouth exposure, more potential donors? More representative
clout for acquiring resources from Apache?
I'm not saying -- I would never say -- that making AOO available to
the world is a bad or unnecessary thing. Given monopolistic business
practices and commercialization of software available, it's important
for there to be freely available alternatives to such things as an
office productivity suite. But if marketing is going to occur, it
would be good to know what said marketing is meant to accomplish,
other than promotion for promotion's sake. Promotion for promotion's
sake is the organizational manifestation of a viral idea.
If there's to be a discussion on marketing, perhaps it should include
a manifesto that's more concrete and strategic than "Don't you think
this is great? Let's throw money at it until you do."
Don
Re: [ApacheCon] BoF session on AOO community
Posted by Jörg Schmidt <jo...@j-m-schmidt.de>.
> Good points Jörg, I hope you'll be at the BoF session at the
> ApacheCon
> EU in Sinsheim to plead for them.
Unfortunately I will not be in Sinsheim.
Greetings
Jörg
Re: [ApacheCon] BoF session on AOO community
Posted by Peter Junge <pe...@gmx.org>.
On 10/29/2012 2:22 PM, Jörg Schmidt wrote:
> Hello Rob, *,
>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: Rob Weir [mailto:robweir@apache.org]
>
>> I think the challenge is to change the thinking that says a project
>> can only be successful if it raises money.
>
>
> Yes, you're right.
> But success is measured, in my opinion, in the dissemination of AOO, for private users *but also* for use in companies.
>
> In my experience this purpose, the work on the ground is essential. AOO must be present to the public and decision makers in companies already have AOO be seen as a real alternative to MS Office.
> This calls for talks as a relevant framework in Germany at Chamber of Commerce Events.
>
> I personally have several months ago on the phone with a German IBM manager and to illustrate the relevance of such things.
> What concerns me is not about money (or primarily to money), but about collaboration in the communitybecause IBM, I and the German community are parts of the international community.
>
> I have also read the demands of IBM, on XING, to create a partner network, and I think that's a good idea, but unfortunately I put demand on the fixed nothing concrete happens.
>
> Collaboration in the community is not a question of money but of doing and at the same time, this cooperation also key to the success of service providers, e.g. such under which:
> http://www.openoffice.org/bizdev/consultants.html
> are listed.
>
> Currently I am professionally e.g. in negotiations for a major consulting company, which either LO or AOO want to use (instead of MS Office) on hundreds or thousands of workplaces, but these companies want to see visible presence of AOO.
> Such companies want from me, as an expert, impartial advice and not the reference to other companies.
>
> For Germany, I would wish for the future practical cooperation of consultants like me, medium-sized businesses, large companies, such as IBM, and the community, for mutual success.
>
> I'm ready for this for a long time, and as many of the German community, but we must finally start real actions.
>
> LibreOffice is everywhere in Germany, but where are we? Where AOO is really visible in Germany?
>
> Besides exhibitions (e.g. CeBIT or as the "LinuxTag" in Berlin), were "IHK meetings" an important opportunity. In the next year it will be an event of FroDeV commercial users give (http://www.frodev.org/konferenz), I'm sure that LibreOffice will be there, but also Apache OpenOffice?
Good points Jörg, I hope you'll be at the BoF session at the ApacheCon
EU in Sinsheim to plead for them.
Peter
Re: [ApacheCon] BoF session on AOO community
Posted by Peter Junge <pe...@gmx.org>.
On 10/29/2012 11:15 PM, Rob Weir wrote:
> On Mon, Oct 29, 2012 at 9:27 AM, Jörg Schmidt <jo...@j-m-schmidt.de> wrote:
>> Hello,
>>
[...]
> Customers don't come to IBM looking only for OpenOffice. They are
> looking for a bundle of software and services and OpenOffice might
> enter the discussions as a small part of the overall deal. We
> commonly work with business partners, subcontractors, etc., where
> specialized skills are needed. This includes partners large and
> small.
Even if you guys only bundle AOO, isn't there a big difference between
bundling "AOO - never heard of it" and bundling "AOO - seen it at the
CeBIT"?
>> It would be good if IBM would consider the experiences of the past which consist of OOo, SUN and Oracle.
>>
> And you might consider IBM's experience with Linux, where we invested
> over $1 billion into Linux development, but we don't sell Linux. But
> we're glad to work with partners on deals involving Linux.
IBM's success with bundling Linux on servers is strongly related to the
popularity of Linux.
Peter
Re: [ApacheCon] BoF session on AOO community
Posted by Alexandro Colorado <jz...@oooes.org>.
On 11/1/12, Jürgen Schmidt <jo...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On 10/30/12 12:14 PM, Rob Weir wrote:
>> On Oct 30, 2012, at 4:19 AM, "Jörg Schmidt" <jo...@j-m-schmidt.de>
>> wrote:
>>
>>>> When we have something to announce you can expect to read it in
>>>> official places. It won't be something we'll be hiding in strange
>>>> corners of the web.
>>>
>>> That means if an employee identifies proposals on XING does not
>>> correspond to the opinion of the IBM? Not officially?
>>> I think that's a strange point of view.
>>>
>>> I think sentences like:
>>>
>>> "heute mal eine ganz andere Anfrage, IBM als eine der Firmen, die sich im
>>> Apache OpenOffice Projekt engagiert, macht sich auch über ein Service &
>>> Support Konzept im Rahmen von Apache OpenOffice Gedanken.
>>> [...]
>>> Ich würde gerne mehr darüber erfahren, wer im OpenOffice Umfeld aktiv ist
>>> und an einer Partnerbeziehung auf dieser Ebene mit IBM interessiert
>>> ist."
>>>
>>> are absolutely clear.
>>
>> This sounds like research to me.
>
> exactly, I simply wanted to start a discussion on a further channel and
> I haven't offered anything concrete. It was an attempt of brainstorming
> without the success that I has looked for :-(
>
> The idea of such a partner network of course is that people or even
> companies can make use of it and can recommend each other on demand. Or
> ISV can work together on bigger deals if necessary.
>
> As Rob pointed already out if IBM receive a request for support for AOO
> but IBM can't help for whatever reason it would be good to have a
> partner network worldwide where we simply could recommend an ISV/partner.
>
> It's funny in the past people complained about the dominance of
> Sun/Oracle in the project, then people tried to put IBM in this
> position. But IBM don't want a special role in the project, we want be
> part of the overall community and want work together with others.
The issue with Sun/Oracle wasn't business related but community
related. At a point Sun usually wasn't really in a meaningful picture
in many of the peripheral offices. The partner network was always
something that was embraced during the BizDev project, but the
relevance of this effort wasn't enough to capture possible
consultants. Also beside the BizDev list, there was a need for more
corporate push, like partner relations upstream and a real channel to
discuss business-related needs of the software.
We meet a couple of times with Simon Phipps to have Sun more engaged
on OOo affairs, but bureaucracy and the internal struggles at Sun
didn't make the idea go that fair in.
>
> It seems that you expect IBM should taking a leading role here. But I
> think the best way to show confidence in the project is a healthy,
> diverse and working community without a leading company and that exactly
> is what Apache guarantees.
>
> Juergen
>
>>
>>>
>>> But no problem, I will contact IBM directly. Thanks for your
>>> clarification.
>>>
>>>
>>
>> If everything is "absolutely clear" to you then I don't know what you
>> want "clarifications" on. But if you do have a question then just
>> ask it, here or via private email if that is your preference. But I
>> speak honestly when I say that I cannot figure out what your theory is
>> here and what you think is occurring.
>>
>> Rob
>>
>>
>>> Greetings,
>>> Jörg
>>>
>
>
--
Alexandro Colorado
PPMC Apache OpenOffice
http://es.openoffice.org
Re: [ApacheCon] BoF session on AOO community
Posted by Jürgen Schmidt <jo...@gmail.com>.
On 10/30/12 12:14 PM, Rob Weir wrote:
> On Oct 30, 2012, at 4:19 AM, "Jörg Schmidt" <jo...@j-m-schmidt.de> wrote:
>
>>> When we have something to announce you can expect to read it in
>>> official places. It won't be something we'll be hiding in strange
>>> corners of the web.
>>
>> That means if an employee identifies proposals on XING does not correspond to the opinion of the IBM? Not officially?
>> I think that's a strange point of view.
>>
>> I think sentences like:
>>
>> "heute mal eine ganz andere Anfrage, IBM als eine der Firmen, die sich im Apache OpenOffice Projekt engagiert, macht sich auch über ein Service & Support Konzept im Rahmen von Apache OpenOffice Gedanken.
>> [...]
>> Ich würde gerne mehr darüber erfahren, wer im OpenOffice Umfeld aktiv ist und an einer Partnerbeziehung auf dieser Ebene mit IBM interessiert ist."
>>
>> are absolutely clear.
>
> This sounds like research to me.
exactly, I simply wanted to start a discussion on a further channel and
I haven't offered anything concrete. It was an attempt of brainstorming
without the success that I has looked for :-(
The idea of such a partner network of course is that people or even
companies can make use of it and can recommend each other on demand. Or
ISV can work together on bigger deals if necessary.
As Rob pointed already out if IBM receive a request for support for AOO
but IBM can't help for whatever reason it would be good to have a
partner network worldwide where we simply could recommend an ISV/partner.
It's funny in the past people complained about the dominance of
Sun/Oracle in the project, then people tried to put IBM in this
position. But IBM don't want a special role in the project, we want be
part of the overall community and want work together with others.
It seems that you expect IBM should taking a leading role here. But I
think the best way to show confidence in the project is a healthy,
diverse and working community without a leading company and that exactly
is what Apache guarantees.
Juergen
>
>>
>> But no problem, I will contact IBM directly. Thanks for your clarification.
>>
>>
>
> If everything is "absolutely clear" to you then I don't know what you
> want "clarifications" on. But if you do have a question then just
> ask it, here or via private email if that is your preference. But I
> speak honestly when I say that I cannot figure out what your theory is
> here and what you think is occurring.
>
> Rob
>
>
>> Greetings,
>> Jörg
>>
Re: [ApacheCon] BoF session on AOO community
Posted by Peter Junge <pe...@gmx.org>.
On 11/1/2012 2:18 AM, Andrew Rist wrote:
>
> On 10/30/2012 5:35 PM, Peter Junge wrote:
>> I will not be in person in Sinsheim, hence we'll need one, better two
>> moderators for that BoF session. The initial tasks seems quite simple.
>> It's just saying hello to the attendees, making a short statement what
>> the session is about, then kicking off the discussion with throwing in
>> some key issues, e.g. collected from this discussion. After that it's
>> a moderators job like any other.
> I'll raise my hand for this. Looks like the moderators will be myself
> and imacat. I'll collect up the topics that have been raised so far,
> and it looks like we can hope to have a lively and informative session.
Andrew, thanks a lot. I think imacat and you are an excellent combination.
Best regards,
Peter
>
> Andrew
>
>>
>> On 10/31/2012 1:06 AM, imacat wrote:
>>> It's a long list of discussion to read. There seems to be a lot to
>>> discuss in our BoF session.
>>>
>>> So, what is the help we need for our BoF session now?
>>>
>
Re: [ApacheCon] BoF session on AOO community
Posted by Andrew Rist <an...@oracle.com>.
On 10/30/2012 5:35 PM, Peter Junge wrote:
> I will not be in person in Sinsheim, hence we'll need one, better two
> moderators for that BoF session. The initial tasks seems quite simple.
> It's just saying hello to the attendees, making a short statement what
> the session is about, then kicking off the discussion with throwing in
> some key issues, e.g. collected from this discussion. After that it's
> a moderators job like any other.
I'll raise my hand for this. Looks like the moderators will be myself
and imacat. I'll collect up the topics that have been raised so far,
and it looks like we can hope to have a lively and informative session.
Andrew
>
> On 10/31/2012 1:06 AM, imacat wrote:
>> It's a long list of discussion to read. There seems to be a lot to
>> discuss in our BoF session.
>>
>> So, what is the help we need for our BoF session now?
>>
Re: [ApacheCon] BoF session on AOO community
Posted by Peter Junge <pe...@gmx.org>.
On 10/31/2012 9:43 AM, imacat wrote:
> On 2012/10/31 08:35, Peter Junge said:
>> I will not be in person in Sinsheim, hence we'll need one, better two
>> moderators for that BoF session. The initial tasks seems quite simple.
>> It's just saying hello to the attendees, making a short statement what
>> the session is about, then kicking off the discussion with throwing in
>> some key issues, e.g. collected from this discussion. After that it's a
>> moderators job like any other.
>
> If we still need one moderator, I suppose I can help. ^_*'
That would be great. :-)
>
>> On 10/31/2012 1:06 AM, imacat wrote:
>>> It's a long list of discussion to read. There seems to be a lot to
>>> discuss in our BoF session.
>>> So, what is the help we need for our BoF session now?
>
Re: [ApacheCon] BoF session on AOO community
Posted by imacat <im...@mail.imacat.idv.tw>.
On 2012/10/31 08:35, Peter Junge said:
> I will not be in person in Sinsheim, hence we'll need one, better two
> moderators for that BoF session. The initial tasks seems quite simple.
> It's just saying hello to the attendees, making a short statement what
> the session is about, then kicking off the discussion with throwing in
> some key issues, e.g. collected from this discussion. After that it's a
> moderators job like any other.
If we still need one moderator, I suppose I can help. ^_*'
> On 10/31/2012 1:06 AM, imacat wrote:
>> It's a long list of discussion to read. There seems to be a lot to
>> discuss in our BoF session.
>> So, what is the help we need for our BoF session now?
--
Best regards,
imacat ^_*' <im...@mail.imacat.idv.tw>
PGP Key http://www.imacat.idv.tw/me/pgpkey.asc
<<Woman's Voice>> News: http://www.wov.idv.tw/
Tavern IMACAT's http://www.imacat.idv.tw/
Woman in FOSS in Taiwan http://wofoss.blogspot.com/
OpenOffice http://www.openoffice.org/
EducOO/OOo4Kids Taiwan http://www.educoo.tw/
Greenfoot Taiwan http://greenfoot.westart.tw/
Re: [ApacheCon] BoF session on AOO community
Posted by Peter Junge <pe...@gmx.org>.
I will not be in person in Sinsheim, hence we'll need one, better two
moderators for that BoF session. The initial tasks seems quite simple.
It's just saying hello to the attendees, making a short statement what
the session is about, then kicking off the discussion with throwing in
some key issues, e.g. collected from this discussion. After that it's a
moderators job like any other.
On 10/31/2012 1:06 AM, imacat wrote:
> It's a long list of discussion to read. There seems to be a lot to
> discuss in our BoF session.
>
> So, what is the help we need for our BoF session now?
>
Re: [ApacheCon] BoF session on AOO community
Posted by imacat <im...@mail.imacat.idv.tw>.
It's a long list of discussion to read. There seems to be a lot to
discuss in our BoF session.
So, what is the help we need for our BoF session now?
--
Best regards,
imacat ^_*' <im...@mail.imacat.idv.tw>
PGP Key http://www.imacat.idv.tw/me/pgpkey.asc
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Re: [ApacheCon] BoF session on AOO community
Posted by Jörg Schmidt <jo...@j-m-schmidt.de>.
> If everything is "absolutely clear" to you then I don't know what you
> want "clarifications" on. But if you do have a question then just
> ask it, here or via private email if that is your preference.
Hello Rob,
Ok, thank you, I will send you a private email.
Greetings,
Jörg
Re: [ApacheCon] BoF session on AOO community
Posted by Rob Weir <ra...@gmail.com>.
On Oct 30, 2012, at 4:19 AM, "Jörg Schmidt" <jo...@j-m-schmidt.de> wrote:
>> When we have something to announce you can expect to read it in
>> official places. It won't be something we'll be hiding in strange
>> corners of the web.
>
> That means if an employee identifies proposals on XING does not correspond to the opinion of the IBM? Not officially?
> I think that's a strange point of view.
>
> I think sentences like:
>
> "heute mal eine ganz andere Anfrage, IBM als eine der Firmen, die sich im Apache OpenOffice Projekt engagiert, macht sich auch über ein Service & Support Konzept im Rahmen von Apache OpenOffice Gedanken.
> [...]
> Ich würde gerne mehr darüber erfahren, wer im OpenOffice Umfeld aktiv ist und an einer Partnerbeziehung auf dieser Ebene mit IBM interessiert ist."
>
> are absolutely clear.
This sounds like research to me.
>
> But no problem, I will contact IBM directly. Thanks for your clarification.
>
>
If everything is "absolutely clear" to you then I don't know what you
want "clarifications" on. But if you do have a question then just
ask it, here or via private email if that is your preference. But I
speak honestly when I say that I cannot figure out what your theory is
here and what you think is occurring.
Rob
> Greetings,
> Jörg
>
Re: [ApacheCon] BoF session on AOO community
Posted by Jörg Schmidt <jo...@j-m-schmidt.de>.
> When we have something to announce you can expect to read it in
> official places. It won't be something we'll be hiding in strange
> corners of the web.
That means if an employee identifies proposals on XING does not correspond to the opinion of the IBM? Not officially?
I think that's a strange point of view.
I think sentences like:
"heute mal eine ganz andere Anfrage, IBM als eine der Firmen, die sich im Apache OpenOffice Projekt engagiert, macht sich auch über ein Service & Support Konzept im Rahmen von Apache OpenOffice Gedanken.
[...]
Ich würde gerne mehr darüber erfahren, wer im OpenOffice Umfeld aktiv ist und an einer Partnerbeziehung auf dieser Ebene mit IBM interessiert ist."
are absolutely clear.
But no problem, I will contact IBM directly. Thanks for your clarification.
Greetings,
Jörg
Re: [ApacheCon] BoF session on AOO community
Posted by Rob Weir <ra...@gmail.com>.
On Oct 29, 2012, at 6:40 PM, "Jörg Schmidt" <jo...@j-m-schmidt.de> wrote:
>
>> Customers don't come to IBM looking only for OpenOffice.
>
> I mean companies, not simple users.
I mean companies as well.
> And these companies ask me if they should use AOO or LO and they look around in the market.
>
> These companies need my help, but they also need the confidence in the future of AOO and for many companies this is not a question of what the community is saying, but to say what its large community of partners (eg IBM).
>
> Views on the document of February 2012:
> http://ebookbrowse.com/symphony-apache-future-faq-02-2012-pdf-d359761565
>
> and I tell you, that is the question many companies: When will "The Apache OpenOffice IBM Edition" on the market?
>
I'm sorry if you think that IBM product plans will be reviewed and
discussed on this list in advance. But that is not how it will work.
I think we've made it clear that the distinguishing features in the
"IBM Edition" will be a set of extensions that connect AOO to various
IBM middleware products. But the feature details and timing are not
this project's concern. Similarly we have no right to demand that Yuri
detail his OS/2 business plans or that Adfinis Sygroup discuss the
details of their Solaris business plan.
>> They are
>> looking for a bundle of software and services and OpenOffice might
>> enter the discussions as a small part of the overall deal. We
>> commonly work with business partners, subcontractors, etc., where
>> specialized skills are needed. This includes partners large and
>> small.
>
> But what IBM is doing in practice?
> It is your colleague who wrote the following:
> https://www.xing.com/net/aoo/allgemeines-diskussionsforum-698796/partner-netzwerk-rund-um-apache-openoffice-41041065/
>
> and when I speak of, as a consultant for AOO, IBM I get no useful answer. That is the fact. Sorry, that's just the truth.
> I you can not post details here, but I mean what I say.
>
When we have something to announce you can expect to read it in
official places. It won't be something we'll be hiding in strange
corners of the web.
Until then you'll need to deal with FUD when developing your business
just like we do. Remember the move to Apache and our recent
graduation are both pro-stability events. These make it safer to
invest in AOO.
>> I doubt the opportunities will flow from small companies to IBM.
>
> I do not, because it is grown in Germany OOo in business sector.
>
> The truth in this case is the OOo was as last in higher esteem than StarOffice and that was the merit of small German companies, not from Sun or Oracle.
>
> Or is that 'too much' truth?
>
How Sun lost money on OOo is not really relevant to what we do today.
>>> It would be good if IBM would consider the experiences of
>> the past which consist of OOo, SUN and Oracle.
>>
>> And you might consider IBM's experience with Linux, where we invested
>> over $1 billion into Linux development, but we don't sell Linux. But
>> we're glad to work with partners on deals involving Linux.
>
> Yes, you're right.
>
> And many potential partners would be for the future of similar transactions with IBM wish regarding AOO.
>
> Statements in:
> https://www.xing.com/net/aoo/allgemeines-diskussionsforum-698796/partner-netzwerk-rund-um-apache-openoffice-41041065/
>
> are correct, they need to be filled with life
>
>
>
> Again, sorry for my statements ... I know these are not issues for the list here, but there are important issues for small companies and consultants like me. And it should be important issues for IBM.
>
Honestly I still have no idea what your concern is. Sorry.
-Rob
> Greetings
> Jörg
>
Re: [ApacheCon] BoF session on AOO community
Posted by Jörg Schmidt <jo...@j-m-schmidt.de>.
> Customers don't come to IBM looking only for OpenOffice.
I mean companies, not simple users. And these companies ask me if they should use AOO or LO and they look around in the market.
These companies need my help, but they also need the confidence in the future of AOO and for many companies this is not a question of what the community is saying, but to say what its large community of partners (eg IBM).
Views on the document of February 2012:
http://ebookbrowse.com/symphony-apache-future-faq-02-2012-pdf-d359761565
and I tell you, that is the question many companies: When will "The Apache OpenOffice IBM Edition" on the market?
> They are
> looking for a bundle of software and services and OpenOffice might
> enter the discussions as a small part of the overall deal. We
> commonly work with business partners, subcontractors, etc., where
> specialized skills are needed. This includes partners large and
> small.
But what IBM is doing in practice?
It is your colleague who wrote the following:
https://www.xing.com/net/aoo/allgemeines-diskussionsforum-698796/partner-netzwerk-rund-um-apache-openoffice-41041065/
and when I speak of, as a consultant for AOO, IBM I get no useful answer. That is the fact. Sorry, that's just the truth.
I you can not post details here, but I mean what I say.
> I doubt the opportunities will flow from small companies to IBM.
I do not, because it is grown in Germany OOo in business sector.
The truth in this case is the OOo was as last in higher esteem than StarOffice and that was the merit of small German companies, not from Sun or Oracle.
Or is that 'too much' truth?
> > It would be good if IBM would consider the experiences of
> the past which consist of OOo, SUN and Oracle.
> >
>
> And you might consider IBM's experience with Linux, where we invested
> over $1 billion into Linux development, but we don't sell Linux. But
> we're glad to work with partners on deals involving Linux.
Yes, you're right.
And many potential partners would be for the future of similar transactions with IBM wish regarding AOO.
Statements in:
https://www.xing.com/net/aoo/allgemeines-diskussionsforum-698796/partner-netzwerk-rund-um-apache-openoffice-41041065/
are correct, they need to be filled with life
Again, sorry for my statements ... I know these are not issues for the list here, but there are important issues for small companies and consultants like me. And it should be important issues for IBM.
Greetings
Jörg
Re: [ApacheCon] BoF session on AOO community
Posted by Rob Weir <ro...@apache.org>.
On Mon, Oct 29, 2012 at 9:27 AM, Jörg Schmidt <jo...@j-m-schmidt.de> wrote:
> Hello,
>
>> The ooo-marketing list is a great place to coordinate international
>> campaigns. And we have a German list for local events, yes?
>
> Yes, we have a German list, but there can discuss only.
>
> The practical work but needs a lot of different things. First people, but also material things and not a case by case, but permanently.
>
> The German community is working on this, but it is also necessary here to address such things. I think.
>
>> I think the consultants directory is the best option here.
>
> Unfortunately, no.
> It is necessary but not sufficient, because it takes more than just information.
> AOO business users need confidence in the AOO and this is growing with major partners.
>
This is standard tech adoption cycle stuff, see Geoffrey Moore,
"Crossing the Chasm", etc. Business rewards those who take risk and
see opportunities where others do not. The question is who has their
own self-interest aligned with our interest in promoting AOO, and who
is willing to put their own skin in the game? Those who take risks
will get greater rewards than those who wait for any given technology
to become mainstream.
>> I see
>> companies looking for AOO support, but they are sometimes too small to
>> interest IBM. But they would be a good size for smaller companies.
>> I'd love to be able to refer them to a local small company.
>
> In this case, please explain to me why IBM calls publicly to a partner network.
>
> see:
> https://www.xing.com/net/aoo/allgemeines-diskussionsforum-698796/partner-netzwerk-rund-um-apache-openoffice-41041065/
>
> Or is that not a valid question?
>
Customers don't come to IBM looking only for OpenOffice. They are
looking for a bundle of software and services and OpenOffice might
enter the discussions as a small part of the overall deal. We
commonly work with business partners, subcontractors, etc., where
specialized skills are needed. This includes partners large and
small.
> Sorry Rob, just the very real problem that I see is that IBM does not understand that small companies can help to open up markets *for IBM*.
> But because the small companies can, IBM should take care of it.
>
I doubt the opportunities will flow from small companies to IBM.
> It would be good if IBM would consider the experiences of the past which consist of OOo, SUN and Oracle.
>
And you might consider IBM's experience with Linux, where we invested
over $1 billion into Linux development, but we don't sell Linux. But
we're glad to work with partners on deals involving Linux.
> Here on the mailing list, not the place to talk about these things, but I and other experts know how to act would be to achieve a win-win-situation for IBM and small companies.
> This is not a pure IT question but an business question. (Note: I have studied business administration.)
>
>> Suggestion:
>>
>> 1) Take one of the general overview presentations from ApacheCon and
>> clean it up. Make it into the "standard' AOO overview presentation.
>> Put it on the marketing wiki. Get it translated into various
>> languages. Maintain it so it remains current.
>>
>> 2) Start a wiki page to lists events-of-interest. List event, date,
>> location, link to website, etc. Project members who are local to that
>> event can volunteer to present there. Many are doable as a day trip.
>> CeBit is in Hanover, 92 minutes from Hamburg on the ICE train, for
>> example.
>>
>> 3) For critical events where there are no local project members we can
>> check with other Apache members, from other projects, to see if they
>> can help cover it. In return, maybe we help promote related projects
>> at events we are able to attend.
>>
>> 4) If any critical conference is still not covered, then we look at
>> other options.
>
> These things are true, but they are no real answer to the problems that I have tried to explain.
>
> It's not a problem of people, time or money, it is first a question broadest possible cooperation of all concerned. Not only for individual events, but rather strategically.
>
>
> Greetings
> Jörg
>
Re: [ApacheCon] BoF session on AOO community
Posted by Jörg Schmidt <jo...@j-m-schmidt.de>.
Hello,
> The ooo-marketing list is a great place to coordinate international
> campaigns. And we have a German list for local events, yes?
Yes, we have a German list, but there can discuss only.
The practical work but needs a lot of different things. First people, but also material things and not a case by case, but permanently.
The German community is working on this, but it is also necessary here to address such things. I think.
> I think the consultants directory is the best option here.
Unfortunately, no.
It is necessary but not sufficient, because it takes more than just information.
AOO business users need confidence in the AOO and this is growing with major partners.
> I see
> companies looking for AOO support, but they are sometimes too small to
> interest IBM. But they would be a good size for smaller companies.
> I'd love to be able to refer them to a local small company.
In this case, please explain to me why IBM calls publicly to a partner network.
see:
https://www.xing.com/net/aoo/allgemeines-diskussionsforum-698796/partner-netzwerk-rund-um-apache-openoffice-41041065/
Or is that not a valid question?
Sorry Rob, just the very real problem that I see is that IBM does not understand that small companies can help to open up markets *for IBM*.
But because the small companies can, IBM should take care of it.
It would be good if IBM would consider the experiences of the past which consist of OOo, SUN and Oracle.
Here on the mailing list, not the place to talk about these things, but I and other experts know how to act would be to achieve a win-win-situation for IBM and small companies.
This is not a pure IT question but an business question. (Note: I have studied business administration.)
> Suggestion:
>
> 1) Take one of the general overview presentations from ApacheCon and
> clean it up. Make it into the "standard' AOO overview presentation.
> Put it on the marketing wiki. Get it translated into various
> languages. Maintain it so it remains current.
>
> 2) Start a wiki page to lists events-of-interest. List event, date,
> location, link to website, etc. Project members who are local to that
> event can volunteer to present there. Many are doable as a day trip.
> CeBit is in Hanover, 92 minutes from Hamburg on the ICE train, for
> example.
>
> 3) For critical events where there are no local project members we can
> check with other Apache members, from other projects, to see if they
> can help cover it. In return, maybe we help promote related projects
> at events we are able to attend.
>
> 4) If any critical conference is still not covered, then we look at
> other options.
These things are true, but they are no real answer to the problems that I have tried to explain.
It's not a problem of people, time or money, it is first a question broadest possible cooperation of all concerned. Not only for individual events, but rather strategically.
Greetings
Jörg
Re: [ApacheCon] BoF session on AOO community
Posted by Rob Weir <ro...@apache.org>.
On Mon, Oct 29, 2012 at 2:22 AM, Jörg Schmidt <jo...@j-m-schmidt.de> wrote:
> Hello Rob, *,
>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: Rob Weir [mailto:robweir@apache.org]
>
>> I think the challenge is to change the thinking that says a project
>> can only be successful if it raises money.
>
>
> Yes, you're right.
> But success is measured, in my opinion, in the dissemination of AOO, for private users *but also* for use in companies.
>
> In my experience this purpose, the work on the ground is essential. AOO must be present to the public and decision makers in companies already have AOO be seen as a real alternative to MS Office.
> This calls for talks as a relevant framework in Germany at Chamber of Commerce Events.
>
> I personally have several months ago on the phone with a German IBM manager and to illustrate the relevance of such things.
> What concerns me is not about money (or primarily to money), but about collaboration in the communitybecause IBM, I and the German community are parts of the international community.
>
> I have also read the demands of IBM, on XING, to create a partner network, and I think that's a good idea, but unfortunately I put demand on the fixed nothing concrete happens.
>
> Collaboration in the community is not a question of money but of doing and at the same time, this cooperation also key to the success of service providers, e.g. such under which:
> http://www.openoffice.org/bizdev/consultants.html
> are listed.
>
The ooo-marketing list is a great place to coordinate international
campaigns. And we have a German list for local events, yes?
> Currently I am professionally e.g. in negotiations for a major consulting company, which either LO or AOO want to use (instead of MS Office) on hundreds or thousands of workplaces, but these companies want to see visible presence of AOO.
> Such companies want from me, as an expert, impartial advice and not the reference to other companies.
>
> For Germany, I would wish for the future practical cooperation of consultants like me, medium-sized businesses, large companies, such as IBM, and the community, for mutual success.
>
I think the consultants directory is the best option here. I see
companies looking for AOO support, but they are sometimes too small to
interest IBM. But they would be a good size for smaller companies.
I'd love to be able to refer them to a local small company.
> I'm ready for this for a long time, and as many of the German community, but we must finally start real actions.
>
> LibreOffice is everywhere in Germany, but where are we? Where AOO is really visible in Germany?
>
> Besides exhibitions (e.g. CeBIT or as the "LinuxTag" in Berlin), were "IHK meetings" an important opportunity. In the next year it will be an event of FroDeV commercial users give (http://www.frodev.org/konferenz), I'm sure that LibreOffice will be there, but also Apache OpenOffice?
>
Suggestion:
1) Take one of the general overview presentations from ApacheCon and
clean it up. Make it into the "standard' AOO overview presentation.
Put it on the marketing wiki. Get it translated into various
languages. Maintain it so it remains current.
2) Start a wiki page to lists events-of-interest. List event, date,
location, link to website, etc. Project members who are local to that
event can volunteer to present there. Many are doable as a day trip.
CeBit is in Hanover, 92 minutes from Hamburg on the ICE train, for
example.
3) For critical events where there are no local project members we can
check with other Apache members, from other projects, to see if they
can help cover it. In return, maybe we help promote related projects
at events we are able to attend.
4) If any critical conference is still not covered, then we look at
other options.
-Rob
>
> greetings
> Jörg
>
Re: [ApacheCon] BoF session on AOO community
Posted by Jörg Schmidt <jo...@j-m-schmidt.de>.
Hello Rob, *,
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Rob Weir [mailto:robweir@apache.org]
> I think the challenge is to change the thinking that says a project
> can only be successful if it raises money.
Yes, you're right.
But success is measured, in my opinion, in the dissemination of AOO, for private users *but also* for use in companies.
In my experience this purpose, the work on the ground is essential. AOO must be present to the public and decision makers in companies already have AOO be seen as a real alternative to MS Office.
This calls for talks as a relevant framework in Germany at Chamber of Commerce Events.
I personally have several months ago on the phone with a German IBM manager and to illustrate the relevance of such things.
What concerns me is not about money (or primarily to money), but about collaboration in the communitybecause IBM, I and the German community are parts of the international community.
I have also read the demands of IBM, on XING, to create a partner network, and I think that's a good idea, but unfortunately I put demand on the fixed nothing concrete happens.
Collaboration in the community is not a question of money but of doing and at the same time, this cooperation also key to the success of service providers, e.g. such under which:
http://www.openoffice.org/bizdev/consultants.html
are listed.
Currently I am professionally e.g. in negotiations for a major consulting company, which either LO or AOO want to use (instead of MS Office) on hundreds or thousands of workplaces, but these companies want to see visible presence of AOO.
Such companies want from me, as an expert, impartial advice and not the reference to other companies.
For Germany, I would wish for the future practical cooperation of consultants like me, medium-sized businesses, large companies, such as IBM, and the community, for mutual success.
I'm ready for this for a long time, and as many of the German community, but we must finally start real actions.
LibreOffice is everywhere in Germany, but where are we? Where AOO is really visible in Germany?
Besides exhibitions (e.g. CeBIT or as the "LinuxTag" in Berlin), were "IHK meetings" an important opportunity. In the next year it will be an event of FroDeV commercial users give (http://www.frodev.org/konferenz), I'm sure that LibreOffice will be there, but also Apache OpenOffice?
greetings
Jörg
Re: [ApacheCon] BoF session on AOO community
Posted by Andrea Pescetti <pe...@apache.org>.
Rob Weir wrote:
> On Sun, Oct 28, 2012 at 8:16 PM, Peter Junge wrote:
>> Apache has a hierarchy of roles (contributor, committer, PMC)
>> but no real leaders (except the PMC chair)
Technically, the PMC Chair is not a leader and his vote counts exactly
as the one of any other PMC member. He merely has the burden to take
care of a number of post-graduation steps, which I completed during the
weekend (except those now being handled by Infra)
http://incubator.apache.org/guides/graduation.html#life-after-graduation
and to act as a liaison officer between PMC and Apache Board.
> I don't think we want to encourage anyone to think of making a career as
> a professional OpenOffice community manager or anything like that.
Yes, but there are events that we as a project cannot (or at least
shouldn't) miss. I tend to agree with Peter's interpretation of this:
allow local (for a certain definition of "local": same country,
continent...) volunteers to occasionally participate in events or talks
to promote Apache OpenOffice there.
Regards,
Andrea.
Re: [ApacheCon] BoF session on AOO community
Posted by Peter Junge <pe...@gmx.org>.
On 10/29/2012 11:33 AM, Rob Weir wrote:
> On Sun, Oct 28, 2012 at 8:16 PM, Peter Junge <pe...@gmx.org> wrote:
>> On 9/27/2012 8:49 AM, Andrew Rist wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>> On 9/24/2012 9:46 PM, Peter Junge wrote:
>>>>
>>>> Dear OpenOffice Community,
>>>>
>>>> During ApacheCon Europe 2012 (ACEU 2012; http://apachecon.eu/), we
>>>> will hold a 90-minute session on the state of the community. Our topic
>>>> is as broad as the community and includes discussion on how to develop
>>>> and further the community of contributors and users making up AOO. We
>>>> hope you can be there and add your voice! We seldom have opportunity
>>>> to meet in person, and this will be a great occasion to go over where
>>>> we are as a community, what we need to do to improve the operations of
>>>> the community, and what can be done by us all to take AOO to top-level
>>>> status. Everyone is invited—and to encourage you further to
>>>> participate, we hope to welcome the Apache mentors who are helping AOO
>>>> move ahead.
>>>>
>>>> At the moment, I'm responsible for this session but due to the fact
>>>> that I'm located in Beijing I will not be able to attend in person.
>>>> Hence, it would be great to find one or two volunteers to host this
>>>> BoF session about the AOO community at the ApacheCon Europe.
>>>
>>> I would be interested, Peter.
>>> Andrew
>>
>>
>> @Andrew, sorry for replying quite late, but I guess my first posting came to
>> long before the event anyway.
>>
>> @All: Let's discuss what what could be talked about during the BoF session
>> on AOO community in Sinsheim. (Note: I'm not attending the ApacheCon EU.)
>>
>> After reviewing a couple of threads in the mailing list archives, I'd like
>> to point out the challenges below:
>>
>> 1) The challenge of dissimilarity of community and community culture: We've
>> seen it in a couple of discussions on the mailing lists. The Apache Way and
>> the former OOo community work quite different, a couple of time disagreement
>> with the mentors arose. Apache is a community where committers leave their
>> affiliations behind (at least in theory) while OOo was under the hood of a
>> single company. At Apache the individual needs to earn merits to be promoted
>> as a committer and later as a PMC member, while OOo everybody just could
>> right away. Apache has a hierarchy of roles (contributor, committer, PMC)
>> but no real leaders (except the PMC chair), while OOo didn't know such
>> hierarchy but had appointed project leads who had certain administrative
>> powers. At Apache, I assume, at least 80% are developers because so far the
>> majority of projects were about producing software by developers for
>> developers, while OOo and still AOO is a large piece of software for end
>> users. At the old OOo community, and I guess many of them are still around
>> but not visible here, more then half of the people involved were not
>> developers, but many volunteers working on localization, QA, documentation,
>> user support and marketing etc. The OOo community was strongly
>> heterogeneous, many native language projects had their own websites and
>> communication channels, detached from the core community. So, the first
>> challenge is: How does that all fit into the Apache way, but still keeping
>> the identity of OpenOffice and leaving room for the satellite communities
>> that do great work e.g. by offering OO support in many different languages?
>>
>
> I don't know if I'd make this be a large focus. Look around. By my
> count the majority of the current contributors to the project are new
> to it from Apache. They don't all have the baggage from OOo
> experience. They understand AOO on Apache terms. We're doing it
> Apache style. It is working. We're getting new language volunteers
> every other day or so. Maybe it is time to let go of OOo style
> community thinking and embrace what we have at Apache. It may not be
> perfect. But it is working.
At least 75% of the PMC have been with the former OOo community.
Anyway, is carrying baggage necessarily bad? Consider, many of those who
left behind from OOo are well over 40, hence we might be stubborn in
keeping those things that were good with the old community.
Nonetheless, embracing what we have at Apache --as you propose-- might
be the result.
>
>> 2) The challenge producing end user software at Apache:
>> As said above, Apache was so far (at least AFAIK) only producing software
>> from developers for developers, contrarily AOO is an end user software. The
>> former usually doesn't need any special promotion effort. Developers and
>> users just come by if they need a particular piece of software. With an end
>> user software like OpenOffice this is much different. AOO needs a big
>> marketing effort to reach its users and constantly growing that user base.
>> At the former OOo community many volunteers have been attending trade fairs
>> (e.g. the CeBIT in Hanover, Germany) and innumerous other events to reach
>> the public. Driving such efforts costs a fair amount of money that should
>> not be solely shouldered by the volunteers who already contribute a fair
>> mount of their time. So, the second challenge is, how to raise funds, either
>> within or outside Apache, to continue with appropriate marketing efforts for
>> AOO?
>>
>
> I think the challenge is to change the thinking that says a project
> can only be successful if it raises money.
The project can certainly be successful in both ways. The way success
looks like will certainly be different.
>
>> 3) The challenge of building the community:
>> The AOO community needs steadily working on developing the community by
>> recruiting developers, QA, translators and people doing documentation and
>> marketing. The third challenge is, how to reach them? A part of this effort
>> can certainly go along with the former challenge as 'marketing to
>> developers'. Being present at events usually reaches many different kinds of
>> people.
>>
>
> The recent growth in translation volunteers is purely due to adding a
> single paragraph to a few Native Language websites. I think we
> sometimes fail to appreciate how many people visit our websites and
> how many are willing to volunteer, if only we would ask. So before we
> start fund-raising to send volunteers to conference to speak to 60
> people in a room, let's try speaking to 250 thousand people who visit
> our home page each day.
I certainly mean events with more than 60 people, e.g. being present at
the CeBIT was always a big success for OOo. Of course, maintaining the
website is crucial but those activities do not exclude each other.
>
> Correct me if I'm wrong, but we have not done a single "call for
> volunteers" blog post, press release or feature on our home page since
> this project started. Isn't that the obvious way to start? I think
> so. But I'm scared at the volume of responses we would probably get
> from such a request. That is why I am emphasizing getting our
> documentation in order, identifying easy bugs, etc., so we can cope
> with the volume of volunteers we will get.
As said above, different approaches do not exclude each other.
>
> The nice part of getting more volunteers is that we also increase our
> geographical diversity. Right now we are pretty heavy in Hamburg and
> Beijing forever. If we can quadruple the number of volunteers over
> the next year, and also the geographical diversity, then we should be
> able to handle a lot more conferences with local volunteers, without
> need for special travel expense reimbursement. And if at the same
> time we grow the number of people making money from AOO-related work,
> then they may be willing to pay for themselves to promote AOO and
> their own work. That is why I am working on the consultants directory
> and similar.
Totally agree.
>
> That's the way to grow. Raising money to send the existing volunteers
> to travel to more places is only growth for the airline industry. It
> is not growth for the project. We need to find people who are able to
> succeed in a business based on enhancing or supporting the OpenOffice
> product to businesses and users.. A business based on promoting the
> OpenOffice open source project is not really a business model. I
> don't think we want to encourage anyone to think of making a career as
> a professional OpenOffice community manager or anything like that.
My personal idea would also be keeping the local focus. when speaking of
funding, I do not mean funding a single person with thousands of Euro
respectively dollars, but fund those who are nearby with 200 Euro or
even far less for a railway trip and a night of accommodation, if
necessary.
>
> My opinion, for what it is worth.
Thanks, you make some good points and I do not think that we disagree
too much, just looking from different angles.
Peter
>
> -Rob
>
>> Other challenges are welcome.
>>
>> Best regards,
>> Peter
>>
>> P.S: and there's still the challenge to find one or two moderators for that
>> BoF session. Andrew, are you still willing?
Re: [ApacheCon] BoF session on AOO community
Posted by Rob Weir <ro...@apache.org>.
On Sun, Oct 28, 2012 at 8:16 PM, Peter Junge <pe...@gmx.org> wrote:
> On 9/27/2012 8:49 AM, Andrew Rist wrote:
>>
>>
>> On 9/24/2012 9:46 PM, Peter Junge wrote:
>>>
>>> Dear OpenOffice Community,
>>>
>>> During ApacheCon Europe 2012 (ACEU 2012; http://apachecon.eu/), we
>>> will hold a 90-minute session on the state of the community. Our topic
>>> is as broad as the community and includes discussion on how to develop
>>> and further the community of contributors and users making up AOO. We
>>> hope you can be there and add your voice! We seldom have opportunity
>>> to meet in person, and this will be a great occasion to go over where
>>> we are as a community, what we need to do to improve the operations of
>>> the community, and what can be done by us all to take AOO to top-level
>>> status. Everyone is invited—and to encourage you further to
>>> participate, we hope to welcome the Apache mentors who are helping AOO
>>> move ahead.
>>>
>>> At the moment, I'm responsible for this session but due to the fact
>>> that I'm located in Beijing I will not be able to attend in person.
>>> Hence, it would be great to find one or two volunteers to host this
>>> BoF session about the AOO community at the ApacheCon Europe.
>>
>> I would be interested, Peter.
>> Andrew
>
>
> @Andrew, sorry for replying quite late, but I guess my first posting came to
> long before the event anyway.
>
> @All: Let's discuss what what could be talked about during the BoF session
> on AOO community in Sinsheim. (Note: I'm not attending the ApacheCon EU.)
>
> After reviewing a couple of threads in the mailing list archives, I'd like
> to point out the challenges below:
>
> 1) The challenge of dissimilarity of community and community culture: We've
> seen it in a couple of discussions on the mailing lists. The Apache Way and
> the former OOo community work quite different, a couple of time disagreement
> with the mentors arose. Apache is a community where committers leave their
> affiliations behind (at least in theory) while OOo was under the hood of a
> single company. At Apache the individual needs to earn merits to be promoted
> as a committer and later as a PMC member, while OOo everybody just could
> right away. Apache has a hierarchy of roles (contributor, committer, PMC)
> but no real leaders (except the PMC chair), while OOo didn't know such
> hierarchy but had appointed project leads who had certain administrative
> powers. At Apache, I assume, at least 80% are developers because so far the
> majority of projects were about producing software by developers for
> developers, while OOo and still AOO is a large piece of software for end
> users. At the old OOo community, and I guess many of them are still around
> but not visible here, more then half of the people involved were not
> developers, but many volunteers working on localization, QA, documentation,
> user support and marketing etc. The OOo community was strongly
> heterogeneous, many native language projects had their own websites and
> communication channels, detached from the core community. So, the first
> challenge is: How does that all fit into the Apache way, but still keeping
> the identity of OpenOffice and leaving room for the satellite communities
> that do great work e.g. by offering OO support in many different languages?
>
I don't know if I'd make this be a large focus. Look around. By my
count the majority of the current contributors to the project are new
to it from Apache. They don't all have the baggage from OOo
experience. They understand AOO on Apache terms. We're doing it
Apache style. It is working. We're getting new language volunteers
every other day or so. Maybe it is time to let go of OOo style
community thinking and embrace what we have at Apache. It may not be
perfect. But it is working.
> 2) The challenge producing end user software at Apache:
> As said above, Apache was so far (at least AFAIK) only producing software
> from developers for developers, contrarily AOO is an end user software. The
> former usually doesn't need any special promotion effort. Developers and
> users just come by if they need a particular piece of software. With an end
> user software like OpenOffice this is much different. AOO needs a big
> marketing effort to reach its users and constantly growing that user base.
> At the former OOo community many volunteers have been attending trade fairs
> (e.g. the CeBIT in Hanover, Germany) and innumerous other events to reach
> the public. Driving such efforts costs a fair amount of money that should
> not be solely shouldered by the volunteers who already contribute a fair
> mount of their time. So, the second challenge is, how to raise funds, either
> within or outside Apache, to continue with appropriate marketing efforts for
> AOO?
>
I think the challenge is to change the thinking that says a project
can only be successful if it raises money.
> 3) The challenge of building the community:
> The AOO community needs steadily working on developing the community by
> recruiting developers, QA, translators and people doing documentation and
> marketing. The third challenge is, how to reach them? A part of this effort
> can certainly go along with the former challenge as 'marketing to
> developers'. Being present at events usually reaches many different kinds of
> people.
>
The recent growth in translation volunteers is purely due to adding a
single paragraph to a few Native Language websites. I think we
sometimes fail to appreciate how many people visit our websites and
how many are willing to volunteer, if only we would ask. So before we
start fund-raising to send volunteers to conference to speak to 60
people in a room, let's try speaking to 250 thousand people who visit
our home page each day.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but we have not done a single "call for
volunteers" blog post, press release or feature on our home page since
this project started. Isn't that the obvious way to start? I think
so. But I'm scared at the volume of responses we would probably get
from such a request. That is why I am emphasizing getting our
documentation in order, identifying easy bugs, etc., so we can cope
with the volume of volunteers we will get.
The nice part of getting more volunteers is that we also increase our
geographical diversity. Right now we are pretty heavy in Hamburg and
Beijing forever. If we can quadruple the number of volunteers over
the next year, and also the geographical diversity, then we should be
able to handle a lot more conferences with local volunteers, without
need for special travel expense reimbursement. And if at the same
time we grow the number of people making money from AOO-related work,
then they may be willing to pay for themselves to promote AOO and
their own work. That is why I am working on the consultants directory
and similar.
That's the way to grow. Raising money to send the existing volunteers
to travel to more places is only growth for the airline industry. It
is not growth for the project. We need to find people who are able to
succeed in a business based on enhancing or supporting the OpenOffice
product to businesses and users.. A business based on promoting the
OpenOffice open source project is not really a business model. I
don't think we want to encourage anyone to think of making a career as
a professional OpenOffice community manager or anything like that.
My opinion, for what it is worth.
-Rob
> Other challenges are welcome.
>
> Best regards,
> Peter
>
> P.S: and there's still the challenge to find one or two moderators for that
> BoF session. Andrew, are you still willing?